The Senate is seeking a pentagon budget $10 billion higher than was asked for.

How are we going to pay for it?

Lauren Elizabeth
3 min readOct 19, 2021

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Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

As virtually anyone who happens to follow the news will have heard by now, democratic lawmakers who control the House, the Senate, and the White house happen to be in negotiations not with Republicans, but amongst themselves and of course, their donors. Negotiations that happen to have been plagued with stories about Senators like Kyrsten Sinema jetting off to Europe for fundraising as opposed to taking any of it seriously. Throughout all of this it’s been difficult not to find it all frustrating when we consider just how little the American people really ask for. And yet here we are, with Senators like Joe Manchin with his yacht worrying about an “entitlement” society. All that being said, news recently broke that only further highlights the utter absurdity of it all.

Bloomberg reporter Roxanna Tyron tweeted:

“BREAKING: Senate defense appropriations bill is out giving the Pentagon more than $10 billion than requested, $725.8 billion”

$10 billion more than was asked for…

We ended a war.

We ended the war in Afghanistan and will no longer be spending what amounted to millions of dollars a day on a senseless conflict. Did any of the Senators who voted for this even bother to consider — as they certainly will when it comes to proposals like Medicare for All — how we’re going to pay for it? Our lawmakers have the unmitigated gall to ask us how we’re going to afford robust climate change proposals or medicare for all while they actively seek a pentagon budget that was $10 billion more than was even asked for?

If this isn’t indicative of an empire collapsing, then I’m not sure what is.

The thing that gets me is lawmakers genuinely seem so baffled at the lack of trust in our institutions. They don’t understand why the frustration continues to mount with each passing day, or why young people aren’t expressing interest in their same tired, decades old talking points that have led to little if any positive change. I mean, how can we possibly take them seriously when they question the cost of…

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Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx